


beginnings with a side of vampire

by mysoulrunswithwolves



Series: love-bites and legwarmers [20]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, feat. elmo the cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9766910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysoulrunswithwolves/pseuds/mysoulrunswithwolves
Summary: One moment he’s stepping down the hall, and the next his face is colliding painfully with the hardwood floors, glasses skittering down the hall, and his brain struggles to understand what caused this abrupt change in position.He looks over his shoulder and sees a pair of dark brown eyes staring back at him smugly.He’s going to kill Yachi’s fucking psychotic cat.alternatively: the one where Tsukki realizes that there are some things that can't be unseentoday in love-bites and legwarmers: elmo the cat, sports medicine, and sleeping in lectures





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry for any of this.

**From: Shouyou**

Kenma come over now

**To: Shouyou**

?

**From: Shouyou**

Just come over

Oh and Suga says to bring Akaashi with you

**To: Shouyou**

??

 

Kenma doesn’t know why he’s here.

Still, the front door of Hinata’s house swings open and Kenma finds himself tugged across the threshold and into Hinata’s arms.

Akaashi stumbles in behind him and shuts the door.

“Kenma I’m so happy to see you it’s been forever!!” Hinata shrieks, arms wound tight around Kenma’s waist.

“It’s been four days, Shouyou.”

Akaashi gestures down the hall. “Suga’s in his room so I’m just gonna…”

There’s a brief, heated glace between Akaashi and himself which consists of Kenma screaming ‘ _don’t you dare leave me here Keiji’_ with his eyes and Akaashi shrugging and winking at him behind Hinata’s back as he turns and disappears down the hallway.

Hinata releases him and tugs him further into the house toward the living room. “Kenma, I want you to meet Kageyama!”

Kenma comes to a stop right in front of a surly looking boy with shaggy dark hair falling into his eyes. He rears back a bit at the intensity of Kageyama’s icy blue gaze, unsure if he was always like this or if he truly didn’t like Kenma.

“Nice to meet you,” he manages to say quietly, dropping his gaze away from Kageyama’s.

Kageyama just grunts and flops back onto the couch.

Hinata pulls Kenma down on the couch so that he can crawl up into Kenma’s lap.

“Kenma, will you show me that new game you were talking about the other day?” Hinata asks, snuggling down more firmly in Kenma’s lap.

Kageyama leans around Hinata to glare at Kenma.

Not knowing what to do entirely, Kenma pulls his DS out of his hoodie pocket and ducks his head, holding the DS out in front of Hinata so that they can both see. He quickly opens the game and tries his hardest to ignore the looks Kageyama is giving him.

Kenma begins playing, hoping that someone, somewhere, will have mercy on his poor soul and save him from whatever is happening on this couch.

***

It’s a realization that hits him all at once.

Realizations are funny like that. Some hit you all at once with about as much grace as a bullet train while others come as quietly as gently falling snow, so easily it’s hard to believe they weren’t already an accepted truth.

And still others come on with that creeping sense of foreboding, like a fog rolling across a shoreline, that you can’t manage to face until it’s the harsh light of a cold morning and you have no choice but to understand that things will never be the same now.

Every time Hajime kisses Oikawa it feels like an already accepted truth in his life. He supposes, that in many ways, it’s been an accepted truth of his life that Oikawa is the most important person to him; that it’s been that way since after Halloween, really.

It’s been a week since school started up again, and he’s already having a hard time getting enough air, feels a little bit like he might be suffocating every time he’s away from Oikawa. It’s ridiculous, really, and Hajime knows this.

He knows that it’s silly to feel like he’s missing something every time he and Oikawa part ways for their different classes, but he does.

Maybe that’s why, the second he hears Oikawa in the house, he pulls him into his room with enough desperation that it’s leaking from his fingertips as he sinks them into the fabric of Oikawa’s scarf. Before Oikawa can say anything, before he can so much as gasp in surprise, Hajime is pulling Oikawa to him and slotting their lips together, sighing as his lungs loosen and he breathes deeply for the first time in hours.

Time becomes disjointed for Hajime as things happen in flashes rather than moments. One moment they’re standing in the middle of his room—hands roaming as they each try to touch as much of the other without ever letting go—and the next he’s ripping Oikawa’s layers off and pinning him to the sheets.

Hajime can feel his heart bending and breaking, the sensation of Oikawa pressed against him again after so long driving him wild with need and desire, and he struggles to be anything other than a creature of desire and heat.

In the next flash he’s flipped on his back, Oikawa on top and kissing his way down Hajime’s bare chest. He gives up on thinking and surrenders to feeling and the heat of the moment.

And it feels, it feels _amazing_. Hajime lets go, releases all the worry and stress and the hesitation to ruin a friendship and surrenders to the feeling of Oikawa pressed against him. He surrenders to the feeling of Oikawa’s tongue in his mouth and his thigh pressing between Hajime’s legs and it feels right.

It feels like freedom.

Time works in strange ways, and Hajime finds things slowing and stretching as he flips Oikawa on his back, pale skin warm and glowing under him as he runs his hands along bare hips and explores the divots between the muscles of his stomach with his tongue.

The moment lingers and lengthens as Hajime sinks into Oikawa, biting down on Oikawa’s shoulder as pleasure shivers down his spine and pools in his stomach at the sensation. He moans at the scrape of Oikawa’s nails down the skin of his back, feels the sting as Oikawa bites and sucks a mark into his shoulder to disguise the groan when Hajime begins hitting that spot _just_ right.

It’s not their first time. It’s not a moment filled with fumbling hands and eager limbs. It’s altogether quite different from any sex Hajime has had with Oikawa up to this point.

It is infinite.

“You’re my best friend,” he whispers into Oikawa’s ear, sinking in deeply and slowly, skin meeting skin, and feels the way Oikawa shakes apart around him, the way he sighs as Hajime speaks into the golden air between them. It’s quiet, easy, the way Oikawa comes apart beneath him, muscles trembling.

Oikawa places soft, tender kisses along the line of his neck, up his jaw, until his lips are moving against Hajime’s own with the same languid, unhurried pace all their movements have.

He slides a hand around to cup the back of Oikawa’s neck, his fingers threading into the silky strands that he’ll never get tired of touching, and returns Oikawa’s kiss deeply. Hajime thinks that if he spends the rest of his long life kissing Oikawa, it won’t be enough.

He pulls away slightly, waiting until Oikawa’s eyes drift open so that he can gaze into the warm brown eyes that somehow, almost without him noticing, became home to him.

It’s like this, staring into the eyes of the one person who has become the most important thing in his life, that he finds his release.

His head drops down and he sucks a obvious and possessive series of marks down the skin of Oikawa’s neck, across his collarbones, below his right ear, all while he waits for their breathing to return to normal and the sweat to cool on their bodies.

He falls back onto the pillows, Oikawa’s limbs draped across him, and wraps his arms around Oikawa tightly, certain that he’s never letting him go now that he’s found him.

“I love you, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whispers, right before he drifts into a light sleep.

“I love you too, Tooru.”

***

“I still can’t believe you live in CBC.”

Koutarou turns around as he turns the lock on the front door. “Why not?”

“I mean,” Terushima continues, ignoring Koutarou’s question entirely. “It shouldn’t surprise me. You knew how to make a Zombie so, I should have figured it out a lot sooner.”

Koutarou thinks this over, shutting the front door behind them as they enter the house. “I’m not sure if you’re complimenting me or not, but this is a great place to live.”

“This house does know how to throw a party. You and the Cormorants.” Terushima toes out of his shoes and places a soft kiss to the tip of Koutarou’s nose, still cold from the winter air.

“Ah, the Cormos.” Koutarou sighs. “Good kids.”

He tugs Terushima into the kitchen and starts making them both tea to warm up.

“Speaking of which, I heard down the grapevine that you’re throwing another party this weekend?” Terushima asks, crowding Koutarou back against the counter once their mugs of water are spinning in the microwave.

Koutarou gets distracted by the narrow waist pressed against his, the soft skin of Terushima’s lower back as he slips his still cold fingertips under the hem of Terushima’s sweater. “Yeah, a new semester party,” he mumbles against Terushima’s lips in the half second before he closes the gap.

He feels the corners of Terushima’s lips lift slightly as he presses back into the kiss, his arms coming up to tug softly at the strands of Koutarou’s hair.

“You’re going to invite me, right?” Terushima asks between a series of soft, tender kisses.

Instead of replying, Koutarou spins them around and lifts Terushima up on the counter, distantly aware that the microwave beeped a while ago. He deepens the kiss as Terushima wraps his legs around his waist, pulling him flush against Terushima. He runs his hands up Terushima’s sides, his chest, until he’s cupping the sharp angle of his jaw between his hands, sliding one hand behind his head to stroke lightly at the soft fuzz of Terushima’s undercut.

A throat clears.

Koutarou jumps slightly, pulling away from Terushima to retrieve their forgotten mugs from the microwave, unconcerned with whoever interrupted them.

However, as he turns back around to hand Terushima his now steeping tea, he notices the way Terushima is glaring at whoever it is in the kitchen with them. Startled by this reaction—he’s never seen Terushima look less than happy in the month they’ve been dating—he turns around and nearly drops his tea as he comes face to face with Kuroo.

“Oh, hey Kuroo,” he says, instantly missing the ease that they used to have between them. Well, he misses it for all of five seconds before he remembers that Kuroo is the one who ruined that ease in the first place. Resentment sweeps through him, hot and bitter, and he reaches behind him for Terushima’s hand.

Kuroo doesn’t say anything as they walk past, just watches Koutarou pull Terushima from the room and toward the privacy of his own room.

They pass Tsukishima in the hallway and Koutarou gives him a small smile and nod, trying not to feel guilty.

***

Kenma prefers, in general, to be left alone.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, most notably his roommates, and now Shouyou. But in general, Kenma doesn’t enjoy talking to other people. He has perfected the ‘don’t approach me I don’t want to talk to you’ vibe by now so that when he’s in class or on campus people don’t try and talk to him.

He prefers to be left alone.

He’s sitting in his entrepreneurship lecture, near the back of the hall, wondering if he can get away with playing on his DS through the professor’s drone and still pass the class when it happens. Someone sits next to him.

Kenma stiffens ever so slightly, ducking his chin to let his hair sweep forward to hide his face before he remembers that he shoved a beanie over his head this morning so that’s not going to work. Instead, he stares down fixedly at his notebook and hopes that whoever it is next to him doesn’t talk to him.

The professor begins to drone on about the risks of starting your own business and Kenma halfheartedly starts taking notes, still mostly focused on whoever it is sitting next to him. Maybe he wasn’t actively giving out his vibes, maybe he wasn’t concentrating hard enough.

He wonders who sat next to him.

Kenma mentally slaps himself. It doesn’t matter who sat next to him. He’s not going to talk to them anyway. It’s just…he’s been sitting with at least one seat between him and the next person for every class since school started. This is the first time anyone has sat next to him. He thought he was safe.

Against his better judgement, Kenma sneaks a glance out of the corner of his eye before looking quickly back at his notes. His eyes widen and he does a double take, surprised.

The kid next to him is passed out, cold.

Kenma studies him, curious as to who would come to a lecture just to sleep through it. He’s smaller than Kenma, probably about Shouyou’s height, and he has soft looking sandy-brown waves of hair falling into his eyes and around his ears. His mouth is slack, lips parted just slightly. A pen is held loosely in the hand resting on his blank page of notes.

Kenma huffs a quiet laugh, amused by the sight for a reason he can’t be bothered to find.

The kid opens his eyes, twitching awake, and Kenma quickly whips his eyes back to his own notes. Next to him, the student shifts in his seat, sitting up out of the slump he had been napping in. Rather unexpectedly, Kenma feels a slight nudge against his elbow and he jolts away slightly.

“Can I copy off your notes?” asks the student when Kenma turns to him with wide-eyed shock.

His eyes are a stunning shade of brown, now that Kenma has a chance to look. Wordlessly, Kenma pushes his notes over so that he can read them easier, and he nods his thanks.

Kenma keeps waiting for him to talk again, to distract him with something unimportant and trivial, but it never happens. His classmate just continues to take notes and not bother Kenma.

The bell system in the building rings, and Kenma jumps slightly, not expecting class to be over so soon. Had it really been an hour? He looks down at his notes and doesn’t remember writing half of them.

Someone taps his shoulder.

“Hey, thanks for letting me look at your notes,” says the boy he’d been sitting next to in class. “I’m Yaku, by the way.”

Kenma blinks at him, putting away his things without thinking about it, and abruptly leaves before he can say something.

Kenma prefers to be left alone.

***

It happens like this:

He realizes at the apex of his leap that it’s wrong.

Koushi knows, with the certainty that every dancer has, the second he’s in the air, that his center of gravity is wrong and it’s going to end badly.

It’s a suspended moment, when his brain processes things much faster than it has any right to, and he sees the trajectory, the angle, the physics of the landing. He feels the tightness of his muscles, the way they’re much tighter than normal due to a more rigorous workout than usual a few days ago to get the corps back into dancing shape after the long break.

It’s beautiful, the leap. He’d used Akaashi’s crouched figure as a stepping stool to launch himself higher into the air, legs splitting into a perfect split mid-air, arms extended above and slightly behind his body.

He knows it’s wrong the second he launches.

But he’s already in the air, so there’s nothing he can do about the surety that he’s going to land wrong. Still, he tries to correct mid-air, tries to shift his body enough so that when he lands it won’t be as devastating as it could be if he does nothing.

It happens like this.

Koushi lands on his left foot, and he feels the pop at the base of his heel, feels something inside his foot tear as his foot rolls through the landing—toe, ball, heel—and his muscles, too tight from workouts, clench and spasm.

Instead of the graceful landing he was supposed to nail, he’s rolling across the floor as his left leg gives out from under him and sends him sprawling across the polished wood of the stage. He rolls, twice, three times, and the world goes black as his head collides with the floor.

 

“...his head pretty hard...”

“Probably...be for a while.”

“...think he’s coming ‘round.”

Koushi groans as he opens his eyes. He has just enough time before the pain hits to wonder why he’s on the ground with everyone hovering over him.

Pain spikes viciously in his head and his left foot, muscles all over his body begin to ache and burn, and he decides to try sitting up.

“Are you okay?” Akaashi asks as he manages to sit up despite the worrying way his head spins around him.

“I,” Koushi begins, flexing his left foot experimentally only to cry out as pain flashes up his leg in a fiery blaze of agony. He gasps, “I hurt my foot.”

Kiyoko is kneeling on the floor to his right, and she runs a hand across his forehead soothingly. “Akaashi, take Suga to the sports therapy office and get his foot looked at.”

Akaashi nods and stands up, holding out a hand to Koushi to pull him up. Koushi flings an arm around Akaashi’s shoulders, leaning on him instead of his left foot as they make their way out of the theater and down the hall of the Richards building.

“How are you really?” Akaashi asks him, voice pitched low and soothing in his ear.

Koushi just shakes his head, unable to speak past the pain in his foot. Nausea swells with every jostle of his foot, and Akaashi must look down and see the pained look on his face, because he falls silent until they reach the office.

“Oh dear, what do we have here?” Asks a dark-haired, middle aged man with glasses.

“Hey, Takeda-sensei. Suga came out of a leap badly and messed up his foot,” says Akaashi. Koushi throws him a grateful look, unable to put much concentration into speaking currently.

“Yaku-kun!” calls Takeda. A sandy haired man pokes his head around a wall. “Come and help Akaashi get Suga onto a worktable.”

Koushi allows Yaku and Akaashi to help him maneuver onto a padded massage table where he promptly collapses, willing the room to stop spinning.

“I’ve got to go monitor the volleyball team’s practice,” says Takeda, pulling a team jacket around his shoulders. “But Yaku-kun is one of my best students, so you’re in good hands.”

“Thanks,” Koushi manages, the nausea fading enough for him to sit up slowly.

“Why don’t we start with you telling me what hurts,” Yaku says softly, eyebrows creasing as he looks for obvious swelling.

Akaashi chews on a fingernail.

“It’s my left foot,” Koushi says, motioning to his foot. “I landed poorly and I felt something tear in my foot.”

Yaku gently lifts his foot, moving it through normal ranges of motion until Koushi winces in pain. He hums in concern, his hands working their way up Koushi’s ankle and calf, kneading at the muscles.

“Your muscles are crazy tight,” Yaku finally says, lowering Koushi’s leg back onto the table. “Have you been doing extra workouts?”

“No,” Koushi says, shaking his head. “Kiyoko-san put us through this pretty brutal workout two days ago to shock our bodies back into shape for the new semester though.”

“Well, that would explain it.” Yaku shakes his head and mutters something about ‘reckless dancers’ under his breath.

“What does it explain?” Akaashi asks, his hands now rubbing soothing circles into Koushi’s back for lack of something to do.

“You have a Jones fracture.”

Koushi and Akaashi trade blank looks.

“A what?” Koushi finally asks.

Yaku sighs and starts gathering tapes and wraps from a nearby cart. “It’s an injury where your fifth metatarsal pulls away from the rest of your foot. Most likely, your peroneus muscle was too tight, so when you landed it couldn’t flex enough and it pulled your metatarsal away.”

“So,” Koushi starts, trying to work through all the muscle groups in his leg. “Basically, my calf was too tight and because of that it caused a bone to fracture away from the rest of my foot?”

“Yep,” says Yaku, spraying the outside of his foot down with a sticky spray for adhesion. “Feel this?” he asks, pressing down lightly on a small divot at the base of his foot, just below his ankle.

Pain flares and Koushi jerks his foot out of Yaku’s soft hands. “Obviously.”

“This is what’s fractured.” He gently picks up Koushi’s foot again and takes a thick strip of medical tape and places it at the bottom of his foot. “It’s small, so I’m going to shore it up with some tape to help support the bone and keep it in place.” Yaku pulls the tape taught, keeping Koushi’s foot flexed and straight, and lays the tape up along his leg so that the tape passes just behind his ankle and up his calf.

“So, that’s it?” Koushi asks as Yaku tapes his foot again, in the same place.

Yaku snorts. “No, that’s not it. You’ll have to come here once a week to let me work on your legs and keep them loose so that this doesn’t happen again.”

“How long until he can dance again?” Akaashi asks, and Koushi breaks into a cold sweat at the thought of not being able to dance.

“You’re not allowed to dance until you can rise up on your toes without pain.”

“Oh,” Koushi breathes.

Akaashi places a comforting hand to the back of his neck.

“I’ll show you some exercises to do while its healing so that you don’t lose any of your mobility,” Yaku says gently. He rubs his hands up and down Koushi’s legs, warming the skin, before using his fingers to start digging into the tight muscles of his lower leg.

“I knew it was bad the second I launched,” Koushi says, a bit dazed.

Yaku looks up at him from under his fringe of sandy-brown hair. “It happens to every athlete, sooner or later.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Koushi says. Akaashi hops up onto the table behind him to pull him back against his chest, legs on either side of Koushi as he wraps his arms around Koushi from behind.

“And here I was hoping you were single,” Yaku says dryly, fingers continuing to knead Koushi’s muscles.

“He’s very much taken,” Akaashi says behind him, voice soft but firm.

“The pretty ones always are.”

The pain in Koushi’s leg starts to fade back to a dull throb, his muscles starting to gradually relax under the pressure of Yaku’s hands.

“Our friends are throwing a party this weekend,” Koushi says, not really sure what he’s saying but unable to stop the train now that it’s going. “You should come. Our friends are all really pretty and not all of them are taken.”

Yaku raises a single eyebrow.

Koushi snaps his mouth shut with an audible click.

“I’ll see if I have the time to drop by.”

“No pressure,” says Akaashi behind him. Koushi can feel him holding back laughter, the filthy traitor.

“Y’all live in those frat houses south of campus? That half of campus wants to live in?”

Koushi tilts his head in thought. “I’ve never thought of them as such, but now that you mention it, they totally are.”

Yaku’s other eyebrow joins the first under his fringe. “You didn’t know that most of campus wants to live in those houses or be at those parties?”

Koushi shakes his head before turning to look at Akaashi, who has remained suspiciously quiet. “Did you know that?”

Akaashi squints his eyes and looks aside. “Babe, everyone knows that. Cormorant house is one of the most popular houses in Greek row.”

Koushi can’t tell if Akaashi is joking or serious. He’s never her his house called Cormorant house. “We live on Greek row?” he asks, focusing on the most confusing part of Akaashi’s sentence.

“Babe—”

“Wait, what is your house called?”

Akaashi sighs at the interruption, but explains, “I live in Cattus, Bubonem, Coronam.”

“You live in CBC house?” Yaku asks, letting out a low whistle. “That’s a serious party house. How do you pass your classes?”

“It’s mostly Bokuto and Kuroo who do the partying, but they do enough of it to keep the reputation alive.”

Yaku gives Koushi’s leg a final pat. “Alright, that’s all I can do for now. I’ll see you this time next week.”

Akaashi works his way off the table before turning to help Koushi, still dazed from discovering that he lives in a frat house, has been for two years, without realizing it. The pain in his foot brings him back to the present as he tries to take a step forward.

“Shit,” he hisses, collapsing against Akaashi.

“Yeah,” laughs Yaku humorlessly. “You won’t be able to walk without pain for about a week.”

“It’s okay,” Akaashi says as he wraps an arm around his waist. “I’ve got you.”

Koushi, with Akaashi’s help, limps out of the room and tries not to cry.

***

Kei is, altogether, unprepared for the scene that greets him when he walks in through the front door.

While living in a house with three established couples also living there (Yachi seemed to be over here than her dorm more nights than not, Kei notices), it’s more often than not that he walks in on _something_ that’s happening.

Still, it takes him a moment to puzzle out what he’s seeing.

Suga is stretched out on their couch, left foot propped up on a pillow with an ice pack on it, leaning against Akaashi, who has one arm around Suga’s chest while the other is held out to the side, book in hand.

“Akaashiiiii,” Suga whines, plucking at Akaashi’s fingers. “I want some tea.”

“I’m busy, babe.” Akaashi doesn’t even look up from his book.

Suga pouts.

Kei decides nothing is worth asking what’s going on with them, so he heads for the basement stairs in an attempt to escape and do his homework in peace.

Or at least, he tries.

One moment he’s stepping down the hall, and the next his face is colliding painfully with the hardwood floors, glasses skittering down the hall, and his brain struggles to understand what caused this abrupt change in position.

He looks over his shoulder and sees a pair of dark brown eyes staring back at him smugly.

He’s going to kill Yachi’s fucking _psychotic_ cat.

“You okay?” Suga calls from his spot on the couch, concern lacing his tone.

“I’m going to kill Yachi’s fucking _psychotic_ cat,” he spits, getting up off the floor and retrieving his glasses.

Suga looks torn between laughing at him and crying out in horror.

“You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” he mutters darkly, just as Hinata bursts through the front door.

“Hey Suga! Look who I brought home!” Hinata shouts, dragging Kozume into the house after him.

Akaashi finally looks up from his book and looks at Kozume in mild surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here today,” he says to Kozume.

Kozume, for his part, looks pained.

Hinata is either oblivious to this or uncaring as he motions at Suga to scoot up on the couch so that there’s enough room for Hinata and Kozume to snuggle onto the end of the couch.

With a wince, Suga lifts his foot and snags the pillow it was resting on, making room for Hinata and Kozume, who settle onto the end of the couch with Hinata ensconced comfortably in Kozume’s lap.

On second thought, Kageyama will be home soon, and it will be interesting to watch his reaction to Kozume’s presence here. He sits on the floor and unloads his homework onto the coffee table and starts working, the sound of Hinata cooing over Suga’s injury and reacting to Kozume’s game keeping him company while he works through marketing strategy.

As busy with his homework as he is, he still feels the shift in the room when Daichi walks in. Kei can count on one had the number of times he’s seen Daichi in the same room as Akaashi and Suga since Halloween.

Kei watches Daichi closely, sees the exact moment when Daichi registers the pillow and ice and bandages around Suga’s foot and his eyebrows pinch together in worry.

Daichi heaves a huge sigh before doing an about face and striding purposefully into the kitchen. Everyone, with perhaps the exception of Kozume, trades confused looks.

Kei shrugs and turns back to his homework while Hinata looks back down at Kozume’s game and Suga returns to staring at the ceiling in boredom.

A few moments later Daichi returns to the room, a steaming mug of tea in his hands that he promptly hands over to Suga.

“Daichi!” Suga exclaims, loudly enough to make Kozume jump half out of his skin. “How did you know I needed tea?!”

Akaashi looks away from his book and up at Daichi, eyes narrowing.

Daichi shrugs. “You always drink tea when you’re upset or not feeling well, so I figured you might want some now since...” he trails off, gesturing to Suga’s foot and rubbing the back of his neck.

Suga blinks up at him in surprise before smiling widely, eyes bright and happy. “Thank you, Daichi.”

Kei feels everyone in the room, collectively, breathe a sigh of relief. Nobody likes when mom and dad are fighting.

It’s at this precise moment that the front door snaps open and Kageyama storms through the entryway and straight into the living room and makes Kei’s entire week.

Kageyama takes one look at Hinata in Kozume’s lap and loses all his shit.

“The _fuck is this_ ,” he snarls, gesturing to Hinata and Kozume. “Are you trying to break up with me?”

Kei’s fairly certain that if Kozume could get away with it he would vanish on the spot.

Hinata’s eyes widen and start to glisten alarmingly. “Of _course_ not,” he cries, panicked and desperate. “Do you want to break up with _me?_ Kenma’s just a friend and we talk about games and stuff I didn’t think you would mind? Or well, I figured that I-if you minded you would s-say something and you never _did,_ so I d-didn’t think you had a p-problem with it.”

Kei feels second-hand embarrassment for Hinata, with the way tears are falling out of his pleading eyes and how he keeps tripping over his words.

It’s one of the worst train wrecks he’s seen in person, and he’s dating Kuroo.

“Of course I have a problem with it!” Kageyama snaps, crossing his arms and pouting. “I’m in _love_ with you.”

Hinata’s, along with everyone else’s in the room, jaw drops to the floor. “What?” he breathes softly.

“I mean, it doesn’t bother me if you have other friends, I just wanted to know why you kept leaving me for other people and then I thought maybe it was because you were trying to break up with me.”

It’s a credit to Kageyama’s reflexes that he manages to catch Hinata, who leaps off the couch at Kageyama, when he wasn’t even looking at him.

“I love you too, dumbass,” Hinata mutters into Kageyama’s neck. “I’ll tell you when I’m hanging out with Kenma, but you have to start telling me when things are bothering you.” He pulls back slightly, legs still wrapped tightly around Kageyama’s waist, to smack him in the chest with the back of his hand. “We could have avoided this if we were better at talking to each other.”

Kei tries not to gag as Kageyama says, “Deal,” in a far sweeter voice than he ever wanted to hear from Kageyama.

Kei rolls his eyes and looks up from his homework to find that literally everyone else has left the room and it’s just him alone, who has the privilege of watching as Hinata and Kageyama race to see who can get rid of all their clothes first without breaking their kiss more than they strictly have to.

He bolts for the basement.

***

The first thing that happens to him—when he finally manages to convince Iwaizumi to let him leave the warmth of his bed—is that he’s attacked by Suga.

Rather, he’s attacked by a pillow to the head, courtesy of Suga. Tooru catches the pillow as it rebounds off his face in reflex and turns to stand in the open archway that opens into the living room from the hallway of their house. He holds up the pillow and gives Suga an unimpressed look.

“Seriously?”

Suga pouts. “I’m just so hungry and I need someone to get me food.”

“Get Akaashi to make you food.”

“He’s not here,” Suga whines pathetically. “He brought me over here for a change in scenery after being cooped up in my house all day yesterday before leaving and I’m _hungry.”_

Tooru rolls his eyes. “Then get up and make something yourself. You know where everything is in our kitchen.”

Suga just looks up at him with the biggest look of pleading Tooru has ever seen. He sighs. “I don’t have the time, Suga. I only have about an hour before Iwaizumi comes for me again and I _need_ to finish my anatomy homework.” Tooru shrugs in apology. “You’ll just have to do it yourself.”

“But I _can’t_ ,” Suga wails, and to Tooru’s complete horror he bursts into tears.

Panicked, Tooru rushes over to the couch and squeezes in behind Suga, pulling him against his chest. “Suga, what’s _wrong?_ ”

“I f-fractured my f-foot.”

Tooru begins to run his fingers through Suga’s now entirely grey head of hair. “What do you need?” he asks as Suga’s tears begin to slow.

“I just want to eat something and sleep for five years,” he whispers. “But Akaashi left me here alone while he’s at rehearsal and I _literally_ can’t do anything without his help.”

“Okay, wait here,” Tooru says, getting up and moving into the kitchen before waiting for a reply. He rummages around in the fridge, pulling out a few containers of leftover food and warming them up.

When he returns to the living room, he finds that—for the first time in ages—all of his housemates are in the same room at the same time.

“Hey, Oiks!” Bokuto shouts, far louder than he needs to when Tooru is literally five feet away from him. “Haven’t seen you in _ages_!”

“That’s because you got a boyfriend and started spending all your time with him,” mutters Kenma from the foot of the couch, Suga’s feet resting in his lap.

“Yeah, Yuuji’s pretty great,” Bokuto says dreamily.

Kenma rolls his eyes.

Tooru walks over to Suga and hands him the plate of food before taking his same spot behind him.

Suga begins eating his food as Bokuto starts singing Terushima’s praises like an Italian opera love ballad.

Tooru watches as Kuroo makes enough pathetic eyes at Kenma to convince him to actually move from his spot on the couch to go and curl up in the giant lovesac in the far corner with him.

“Hey Kuroo,” Suga says, interrupting Bokuto’s exhaustive list about the benefits of Terushima in skinny jeans. “Would you get me some water?”

Without any protest whatsoever, Kuroo gets up and wanders into the kitchen, avoiding eye contact with Bokuto. Tooru doesn’t miss the way Bokuto shifts his weight away from Kuroo as he passes by on the way to the kitchen.

“When did that happen?” Tooru asks Suga, his voice pitched low and in Suga’s ear so that nobody else hears.

Suga shrugs in his arms and tilts his head back to whisper, “I don’t know, but I figured getting them out of the same room for a moment wouldn’t hurt,” into his ear.

Kuroo returns to the room, glass of water in hand, and comes over to the couch to hand it to Suga, stepping over Akaashi who is sprawled out in a languid stretch on the floor.

“Since when are you so nice?” Iwaizumi asks, appearing in the arch of the living room entry. Tooru’s heartbeat kicks up a few notches at the way Iwaizumi is casually leaning up against the wall wearing nothing other than a low-slung pair of grey sweatpants and the marks Tooru left on him not two hours ago.

“Excuse you,” Kuroo says, holding a hand to his heart and smiling benevolently. “I’ve always been a nice person.”

Kenma snorts from the lovesac, not bothering to look up from his game.

“Bullshit,” Bokuto mutters darkly as Kuroo launches himself at Kenma in retaliation.

In a movement so synchronized it’s eerie, Suga, Akaashi and Tooru all look at Bokuto for a long moment with open curiosity. Tooru watches Akaashi and Suga have a silent conversation for a second before glancing at Iwaizumi with a very clear _‘do something’_ face.

“Help,” Kenma squeaks, pinned somewhere under Kuroo’s bulk starfished on top of the lovesac.

“How’s your student teaching going, Bokuto?” Iwaizumi asks, and Tooru shoots him a grateful look.

In front of him, Suga finishes his food and promptly yawns hugely. Akaashi gets up and takes his now empty plate into the kitchen, and Tooru sweeps through the room again.

Iwaizumi now has Bokuto rattling off animatedly about his fourth-grade kids, and Kuroo has shifted so that he’s curled around Kenma and watching him play a game on his PSP.

Convinced that all is well for now, Tooru nudges Suga softly, who has started to doze off in his arms. “Come on, Kou-chan,” he begins as Akaashi enters the room again. “Let’s get you to a bed.”

Suga just mumbles sleepily, so Tooru, with the help of Akaashi, carries Suga into Akaashi’s bedroom and tucks him gently into the bed.

Akaashi quickly changes out of his dance gear and crawls in next to Suga, quirking an eyebrow in question at Tooru.

He can still hear Iwaizumi talking with Bokuto, so he shrugs and slips in with them, Suga’s half-asleep form between him and Akaashi.

“Spill,” commands Tooru, knowing that Akaashi, like usual, knows more than he’s saying.

Akaashi sighs, and Suga cracks an eye open.

“Kuroo kissed Bokuto over Christmas break.”

There’s a moment of extended silence before Tooru hisses, “He did _what?_ ” at the same time Suga groans and says, “That _idiot_.”

“Does Terushima know?” Tooru asks in exasperation. Just when he thinks everything is okay.

Akaashi nods. “He called him almost the second after it happened.”

“Well at least he’s a good communicator,” Suga says, snuggling closer to Akaashi.

“Why?” Tooru asks, still trying to figure out what would possess Kuroo to kiss Bokuto when they’re both in seemingly happy relationships.

“Was it because he finally figured out that Bokuto had feelings for him a while ago?” Suga asks.

“Something like that.” Akaashi hums in thought. “I’m sure that has something to do with it. What I do know is that Tsukishima doesn’t know about this.”

Tooru blinks slowly, once. “Of course he doesn’t. It can’t be that easy.”

“So, what do we do?” Suga asks, eyes drifting shut again.

“There isn’t anything we really _can_ do,” Tooru says. “I think this is something Kuroo has to figure out for himself.”

“Well,” Akaashi muses, “at the very least the party this weekend should be interesting.”

“Twenty bucks says Kuroo kisses someone other than Tsukishima before the night is over,” Tooru says smugly.

“You can’t just bet on something like this,” says Akaashi, disapprovingly, as Suga’s eyes fly open and he says, “You’re on.”

Tooru, despite truly feeling sorry for Kuroo and his current crisis, smiles widely.

“Excellent.”

Akaashi collapses face first into his pillow in defeat.

**Author's Note:**

> I have had a Jones fracture. They're painful and I don't recommend getting one; it ended my college ballet career so
> 
> next time in love-bites and legwarmers: weekend frat parties, ill-advised decisions, and enough disastrous hair to last a lifetime. 
> 
> [Tumblr](https://mysoulrunswithwolves.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/wolfstar_soul)


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